Installing Second Hard Drive

Hi! I have a '98 IBM Aptiva PC and I am about to install a second hard drive. The new drive is larger and faster. Should I put the new drive in one IDE port (as master) with my CD ROM in the same port and then put the old, small, slow disk drive in the other IDE (as slave)? How do I back-up my old hard drive? That can't possibly fit on a bunch of 3.5's, can it? How do I go about partitioning programs between the 2 hard drives? Should my operating system (WINDOWS 98)go on the faster master drive? What the heck will happen when I re-boot? This is making me kinda nervous. Will the operating system know what's going on? Help! Thanks!!

The new drive is larger and faster. Should I put the new drive in one IDE port (as master) with my CD ROM in the same port and then put the old, small, slow disk drive in the other IDE (as slave)?

I'd suggest that you want to end up with the new drive as your primary drive. I.e. the one you have Windows installed on and boot from. This means that you want it to be on the primary IDE controller as MASTER. It will take a couple of steps to get there, however.

How do I back-up my old hard drive?

You mean you don't back it up now? Very dangerous!! I prefer to use a tool from PowerQuest (www.powerquest.com) called DriveImage. This utility will take the partition(s) from your existing HDD and copy them to a new hard drive. Last time I checked it was about US$50 but it's worth it. There are others on the market, like Norton GHOST but they are all about the same. So the first step is to install the new HDD in the computer on any available IDE port. Boot the computer, run DriveImage and copy your existing HDD to the new one.

That can't possibly fit on a bunch of 3.5's, can it? How do I go about partitioning programs between the 2 hard drives?

Well, you could use this scheme but it would take a mountain of floppies!!

Should my operating system (WINDOWS 98)go on the faster master drive? What the heck will happen when I re-boot?

I think it should be on your new drive. The good thing about using DriveImage (or similar tool) is that your existing HDD is still untouched and you can revert to it if the new drive doesn't work right at first. Later, you can continue to use this tool to backup data from your new HDD to the old one for safekeeping.

I suggest installing the new drive as Primary Master, and move the old drive allong with the CD-ROM to the Secondary.

All your data will still be intact on the old drive. You realy will not need to back anything up. (but it is a good idea to)

You will then need to reinstall Windows 98, and all your applications to the new drive. Then you can copy all your data from the old drive to the new one. Once you are sure you have the data copied over, you can then format the origional drive to wipe it clean.

The alternative is to install the new drive as secondary, and simply fdisk, and format it, and your ready to go.

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